Scott vs. Liz a no-brainer

Robert Nemeth

Published Sunday September 9, 2012 at 6:00 am

The contest between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren for a U.S. Senate seat would be a no-brainer anywhere except in Massachusetts where one political party dominates the system. Nowhere but in Massachusetts would someone like Ms. Warren have a chance against a seasoned public servant with Mr. Brown’s personal and professional attributes. But she is a Democrat running against a Republican who is holding a job that belonged to Ted Kennedy for decades.

Yet even a casual comparison underscores the world of differences that separates the two candidates. Consider:

Background, experience. A graduate of Tufts University and Boston College Law School, Mr. Brown entered public service in 1992 as an assessor in his hometown of Wrentham. He served as selectman for three years before becoming a state representative, and then moving on to the state Senate. He won numerous elections, often against huge odds, including a special election on Jan. 19, 2010 that won him what Democrats regarded as the “Kennedy seat” in the U.S. Senate.

“I’m not beholden to special interests,” he told me during our first meeting when he was still a relatively unknown state legislator. “Because I don’t owe anybody anything, I’m free to tell the truth and fight for what I believe in.” And so he has.

He quickly earned a reputation for keeping an open mind and for his courage to cross party lines in the pursuit of the common good. “I’m an American first,” he told me last year, by then well recognized on the national political landscape. “I do my homework, make sure I understand the issue and see if it benefits Massachusetts and our country. Then I vote regardless of which political party initiated the measure.”

Ms. Warren’s Massachusetts roots are largely limited to her professorship at Harvard University, where she is paid a three-figure salary for teaching one course. She was never elected to public office, nor has she any experience in legislative or government work. She became known for helping to set up the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, a federal bureaucracy invented to prevent financial institutions from conducting “abusive” and “predatory” practices, including “aggressive debt collection” and “intrusive credit reporting.”

She was slated to head that agency until it became evident that her ultraliberal views would make Senate ratification impossible. President Obama used a recess appointment to elevate an obscure state official from Ohio to be director of CFPB. Ms. Warren was then handpicked to challenge Mr. Brown, and has been vigorously supported by the Democratic Party establishment and various left-wing organizations.

Policies. Scott Brown’s core principles have remained unchanged: restoring fiscal responsibility through a balanced budget amendment, low taxes and less spending; job creation through private enterprise, as well as strong national security. He aims to be an independent voice on behalf of his core constituencies, ranging from the endangered Massachusetts fishing industry to manufacturers of medical devices and unemployed veterans. “America’s problems won’t go away with one party’s victory or one party’s defeat,” he told the South Shore Chamber of Commerce recently. “It’s going to take the best ideas of both parties, and the best qualities of those we send to Washington. It is going to take all the discipline, will and political courage we can gather up.”

Ms. Warren’s approach to the current problems appears to be more regulations and higher taxes. She supports raising Social Security taxes, as well as taxes that are part of the federal health care program, including Medicare taxes. In all, she supports a total of $3.4 trillion in higher taxes over the next decade, including $2.7 trillion in new taxes. According to estimates, such hikes could cost about 4.5 million jobs.

Character, trustworthiness. Scott Brown has been known as a person of integrity. He has been open and accountable and kept his campaign promises. A colonel in the National Guard, he has championed patriotism. The father of two daughters, he has advocated women’s rights and traditional family values.

Ms. Warren favors the distribution of wealth and claims to be the intellectual founder of the Occupy Wall Street movement. She is the original architect of the anti-business sentiment President Obama picked up recently. “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen,” the president declared recently. Those words echo what Ms. Warren said early on in her campaign: “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own,” explaining that government assistance should be credited for individual success.

A relentless critic of “predatory mortgages” and the “foreclosure crisis,” it turns out that she and her family made hefty profits by buying and selling foreclosed real estate in Oklahoma. She embellished her professional résumé, causing Harvard to list her as part Cherokee and the “first woman of color” on the university’s faculty. There’s been no evidence to substantiate that claim.

Conclusion. It is hard to see why any thoughtful voter would want to replace Scott Brown with someone of questionable integrity, a person who has never been elected to public office and sees the real world from the ivory tower of academia. It would be folly to add yet another liberal Democrat to a congressional delegation that, with the exception of Scott Brown, consists of liberal Democrats marching to the same political drum beat.